A couple months ago, the FDA approved Avastin for use in treating brain cancer. The new approval is just the latest in a growing number of applications for the drug. First approved in 2004 to fight colorectal cancer, Avastin is now considered an avenue of treatment for lung, breast and other forms of cancer. However, the effectiveness of Avastin is highly variable on a case-by-case basis.

We generally take for granted that owners have the power to exclude non-owners from their land. But at one time in the United States,unenclosed and undeveloped land was open to the public for the purpose of hunting, gathering kindling and berries, and walking. Eric Freyfogle, The Lost Right to Roam, in On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land 29 (2007). Today, about half the states still allow hunting on private land unless the owner has posted "no trespassing" signs.

Today, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a widely-awaited speech on the subject of Net Neutrality. He pointed out (correctly, in my view) that much of the success of the Internet, including its success in areas undreamed-of by its founders, is in large part due to its open standards and architecture.

Spain has passed from rating 'AAA' to rating 'AA', after Standard & Poor's, the 1st international rating agency (IRA), lowered its assessment of long-term debt; so she did with Greece, Ireland and Portugal. This is the first time that the S&P financial rating drops for Spain in 30 years.

This month I'm conducting some research into web hosting security issues and ran into the aftermath of the German law passed in 2007 banning security research publication. The policy has had the effect of silencing security researchers from that country. While investigating issues in PHP security I came upon the Month of PHP Bugs website and when I attempted to download a proof of concept to illustrate what type of security issues PHP had back in 2007 I got an explanation from security researcher Stefan Esser explaining why he no longer feels comfortable publishing results to the Internet.

Wired reports: "The Justice Department, citing anti-trust and copyright concerns, asked a federal court judge late Friday to reject a controversial settlement that would have allowed Google to cut through knotty copyright issues in order to create the library of the future." The Justice Department's concerns mirror some of the sentiments expressed by Harvard law professor John Palfrey when a seminar last spring took up the settlement.

It is almost becoming a ritual in our house these days. At the end of a long day at work, the wife and I turn on MSNBC and watch, stunned, as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart put on the parade of angry right wing lunatics. We sit, mouths agape, as we see manufactured rage at town halls over something tangential to health care, we see Glenn Beck weeping over something called "oligarhy" and a whole circus of birthers, deathers, truthers, tenthers, and every other sort of "-er" you can think of (except "thinkers").

President Obama is the Democrat's hero. Not only is he the popularly elected president of the United States, but he is also a talented, intelligent, and articulate leader. Since both parties are such big tents, people tend to use the heroes of the party to define it. Who is the hero for the Republican Party? There isn't one.

It turns out an ugly rumor about someone I admire very much -- a rumor even I had accepted as essentially proven -- might not be quite ready for chiseling in stone after all.

There have been many famines throughout history. However, until the era of modern large scale transportation there was never the possibility of universal famine. But now with supertankers and huge container ships it becomes possible to move enormous quantities of food at very little cost per calorie of food, therefore, now it is a question of who has the money to purchase the food who will get to eat it rather than the local person who farmed the food.

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